page_title: Sophie Blanchard
section_title: Early life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Sophie Blanchard / Biography / Early life and career
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Jean-Pierre Blanchard (* 4. Juli 1753 in Les Andelys; † 7. März 1809 bei Paris) war ein französischer Ballonfahrer. Jean Pierre Blanchard (7 July 1753&#160;? 7 March 1809), French inventor and balloonist. This image is from the Library of Congress online collection, and is in the public domain. See catalog info below. CALL NUMBER: LOT 13400, no. 10 [P&amp;P] Check for an online group record (may link to related items) REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-DIG-ppmsca-02174 (digital file from original print) LC-USZ62-12724 (b&amp;w film copy neg.) No known restrictions on publication. SUMMARY: Half-length portrait of French balloonist, Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Text below elaborates on his career as an aeronaut: "The first aerial mariner, citizen of Calais &amp; pensioner of the French King, born at Andely in Normandy the 4th July, 1753 ..." SUBJECTS: Blanchard, Jean-Pierre, 1753-1809. Balloonists--French--1780-1790. REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA DIGITAL ID: (digital file from original print) ppmsca 02174 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.02174 (b&amp;w film copy neg.) cph 3a15083 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a15083 CARD #: 2002716387
context_page_description: Sophie Blanchard, commonly referred to as Madame Blanchard and is also known by many combinations of her maiden and married names, including Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Marie Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Marie Sophie Armant and Madeleine-Sophie Armant Blanchard, was a French aeronaut and the wife of ballooning pioneer Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Blanchard was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, and after her husband's death she continued ballooning, making more than 60 ascents. Known throughout Europe for her ballooning exploits, Blanchard entertained Napoleon Bonaparte, who promoted her to the role of "Aeronaut of the Official Festivals", replacing André-Jacques Garnerin. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1814 she performed for Louis XVIII, who named her "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration".
  Ballooning was a risky business for the pioneers. Blanchard lost consciousness on a few occasions, endured freezing temperatures and almost drowned when her balloon crashed in a marsh. In 1819, she became the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident when, during an exhibition in the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, she launched fireworks that ignited the gas in her balloon.
context_section_description: Sophie Blanchard was born Marie Madeleine-Sophie Armant to Protestant parents at Trois-Canons, near La Rochelle. Little is known of her life before her marriage to Jean-Pierre Blanchard, the world's first professional balloonist. The date of her marriage is unclear; sources quote dates as early as 1794 or 1797, but most state 1804, the year of her first ascent. Blanchard had abandoned his first wife, Victoire Lebrun, and their four children to travel round Europe pursuing his ballooning career, and she later died in poverty. Variously described as Blanchard's "small, ugly, nervous wife", "small with sharp bird-like features" and later as "small and beautiful", Sophie was more at home in the sky than on the ground, where her nervous disposition meant she was easily startled. She was terrified of loud noises and of riding in carriages, but was fearless in the air. She and her husband were in an accident on a joint flight in 1807 (her 11th ascent, possibly his 61st), in which they crashed and he sustained a head injury. The shock apparently left her mute for a while.
  Sophie made her first ascent in a balloon with Blanchard in Marseilles on 27 December 1804. The couple faced bankruptcy as a result of Blanchard's poor business sense, and they believed a female balloonist was a novelty that might attract enough attention to solve their financial problems. She described the feeling as an "incomparable sensation" ("sensation incomparable"). Sophie made a second ascent with Blanchard and for her third ascent on 18 August 1805, she flew solo from the garden of the Cloister of the Jacobins in Toulouse.
  She was not the first woman balloonist. On 20 May 1784, the Marchioness and Countess of Montalembert, the Countess of Podenas and a Miss de Lagarde had taken a trip on a tethered balloon in Paris. Neither was she the first woman to ascend in an untethered balloon: in Blanchard's time, Citoyenne Henri, who had made an ascent with André-Jacques Garnerin in 1798, was widely credited with that ballooning first, although the honour actually belonged to Elizabeth Thible. Thible, an opera singer, had made an ascent to entertain Gustav III of Sweden in Lyon on 4 June 1784, fourteen years before Citoyenne Henri. Blanchard was, however, the first woman to pilot her own balloon and the first to adopt ballooning as a career.
  In 1809, her husband died from injuries sustained when he fell from his balloon in the Hague after suffering a heart attack. After his death, Sophie continued to make ascents, specialising in night flights, often staying aloft all night.
caption: Jean Pierre Blanchard.
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